Molly

Free Speech Zone: An Evening with Molly Ivins, June 9,2005
Photo courtesy of Wade Harris and Brazos Progressives (used with permission)

On June 9, 2005, I and several hundred other Brazos Valley lovers of Molly Ivins and civil liberties got to meet, see and hear Molly up close and personal. Our Brazos Valley Chapter of the ACLU had some months earlier asked her if she would please come speak at a fund raiser for our recently reconstituted Chapter. We knew of Molly's historical commitment to helping civil rights groups, but we were still surprised and so very pleased when she readily agreed to help us out. Our evening with Molly was an astounding success on all counts. It was a standing room only crowd at the College Station Hilton that night and we couldn't have enjoyed it more. Among other things, Molly strongly encouraged us that night to not sit on our laurels waiting for the right-wing swinging pendulum to head back to the left of its own volition. She told us to get out there and push it back. And she said, don't forget and "have fun" doing it."Drink beer and have some fun." Can't argue with that now can we? (Go here to view some pictures of Molly at the BV-ACLU fund raiser, hosted on the the Brazos Progressives web site.)

Molly's final column, Stand Up Against the Surge, was published on January 11. She died oh so prematurely today at the age of 62. Here's what she counseled in the final paragraph of her column:

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush's proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, "Stop it, now!"

As so many others have acknowledged, Molly was a true national treasure. And I can think of no better way that this national treasure would feel honored than by following her last encouragement to us: Step outside, hit the streets, raise hell, make the ridiculous look ridiculous, bang pots and pans in the streets and demand to stop it now. And don't forget to let the troops know we're trying to get them out of there.

Thank you so damn much, Molly, for your years of advocating for social justice with such wit, wisdom and good humor. You are an inspiration to all who fight for peace and civil liberties and it's a crying shame that you were taken from us way too soon. Folks are sure going to remember you lovingly, though, as we're in the streets and halls of congress, pushing that pendulum back to the left where it damn well belongs. And later, after each of our struggles, when we gather in our neighborhood pubs, laughing and drinking beer as you exhorted us to do, you can be damn well sure that you'll be there with us round the table, too. Here's lifting a cerveza to you Molly!!! ¡Muchísimo gracias por todo, y ojalá que descansas en paz amiga!

(If you'd also like to honor Molly Ivins in another way, donations can be made in her name to the Texas ACLU or the Texas Observer.)

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The times they are a-changin'

Among other things, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 amends the Uniform Time Act of 1966 by changing the start and end dates of Daylight Saving Time (DST) starting this year. Clocks will now be set ahead one hour on the second Sunday of March (instead of the first Sunday of April) and set back one hour on the first Sunday in November (rather than the last Sunday of October). This will make electronic clocks that had pre-programmed dates for adjusting to daylight saving time obsolete and will require updates to computer operating systems. (Source: Wikipedia)

However, the Secretary of Energy has to report the impact of this change to Congress, which retains the right to resume the 2005 DST schedule once the Department of Energy study is complete. (Source: Daylight Saving Time)

With respect to updating computer operating systems, the latest Macintosh OS X update (10.4.6), the system I use, is aware of the DST changes enacted by this law. I don't know squat about the PC's OS, though, so you'll have to go elsewhere for that info if you want it.

According to the folks who put together the Daylight Saving Time website (definitely worth a visit), which is a public service exhibit of the Institute for Dynamic Educational Advancement (IDEA), DST does save energy. Studies done by the U.S. Department of Transportation show that DST trims the entire country's electricity usage by a small but significant amount, about one percent each day, because less electricity is used for lighting and appliances. Energy use and the demand for electricity for lighting homes is directly related to the times when people go to bed at night and rise in the morning. In the average home, 25 percent of electricity is used for lighting and small appliances, such as TVs, VCRs, and stereos. A good percentage of energy consumed by lighting and appliances occurs in the evening when families are home. By moving the clock ahead one hour, the amount of electricity consumed each day decreases.

Here's another interesting tidbit gleaned from the Daylight Saving Time web site: The extension of DST into November has been proposed as a way to encourage greater voter participation, the theory being that more people would go to the polls if it was still light when they returned home from work. (Hell, I think tons more folks would vote if we had some form of proportional representation in this country--or just docked people three months' wages if they don't vote as they do in Bolivia, but I digress.) Anyway, the 2008 presidential election (Nov. 4) will take place after DST ends for that year (on Sunday, Nov. 2), so we won't know whether this theory will hold water until the 2010 mid-term election, which will be conducted on November 2, five days before the DST change on Sunday, November 7.

Yes, Mr. Dylan, the times they are a-changin'--at least in those communities that haven't opted out of DST coverage.

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Tax me, please!

[Carbon] tax is taboo in Washington, but now there's a place it dares speak its name: the Carbon Tax Center, which opened this week with the aim of becoming "the village square for civic and political conversations about the why, who, and how of taxing CO2 emissions in the U.S. and, eventually, the world." A Taboo Link, John Tierney - TierneyLab, NYT, 24JAN07

Why carbon taxes? Why a Carbon Tax Center?

Charging American businesses and individuals a price to emit carbon dioxide (CO2) is essential to reduce U.S. emissions quickly and steeply enough to prevent atmospheric concentrations of CO2 from reaching an irreversible tipping point. It’s a basic economic principle that prices of goods and services should reflect ("internalize" as the economists say) all of the societal costs (such as pollution) that production of the goods or services imposes on society. Yet the prices of gasoline, electricity and other fossil fuels don’t include many of these societal costs, particularly their impact on global warming. The necessary transformation of our fossil fuels-based energy system to reliance on energy efficiency, renewable energy and sustainable fuels simply won’t happen without carbon taxes sending accurate and powerful price signals into every corner of the economy and every aspect of life.

This principle is obvious to professional economists, familiar to most policy-makers, and understandable to citizens. Nevertheless, the forces arrayed against carbon taxes are many — not just fuel corporations with a massive stake in keeping the U.S. addicted to fossil fuels, but deep-seated assumptions such as faith that we can pull through with a mix of native ingenuity and advanced technology. (Washington Post columnist Sebastian Mallaby brilliantly dissected this myth in a 2006 column.) We would love to agree, but our long experience in the energy arena, including advocating for efficiency and renewables, convinces us that higher fuel prices, delivered via equitable, progressive carbon tax-shifting, will also be essential.

America needs a full and candid discussion of carbon taxing in the national arena and at the state and local levels as well. We have formed the Carbon Tax Center to advance this discussion. We are mindful of the difficulties of proposing new or increased taxes in the U.S. (Our insistence on progressive tax-shifting is partly a response to this difficulty, though it is also rooted in our determination to ensure that carbon taxes improve rather than set back equity in America.) CTC will provide intellectual and practical support, as well as a sense of community, to help carbon tax proponents in every region and across the political spectrum coalesce into an irresistible civic force.

That's the Carbon Tax Center's answer to the "Why?" question, and the rationale for this tax sure makes sense to me. Seems like a majority of the business and political leaders who attended the recently concluded World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos think so, too.

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We love it enough to try to save it

I was going to write a little post about marching with the Austin peace demonstrators this past Saturday, that is until I read NYT's columnist Bob Herbert's column today on his experience at the March on Washington. As you would fully expect from Herbert, he does his usual stellar job of thoughtful writing in his piece. But all that would have been needed to tell the story of our Texas rally is to replace "Washington" in Herbert's byline with "Austin" and the rest pretty much would have fit up perfectly with our experience here.

We, too, had a "a beautiful sunlit blue" sky to cheer us on, and although the Capitol building we had in view as we marched up Congress Street in Austin wasn't the one housing the folks enabled to stop the war and start the formal investigative process to impeach Bush, it was still obvious to all that we were marching straight to the doors of governmental power. Here's what I mean:


Photo by me


Not as much as an "emotional backdrop" as the Capitol building in Herbert's description, but upon first noticing the above view over the heads of the protesters in front of them as they marched up the street, I'd bet that most folks in the Austin rally readily imagined they were shoulder-to-shoulder with the marchers in DC.

Herbert went on to eloquently write in his column:

You can say what you want about the people opposed to this wretched war in Iraq, try to stereotype them any way you can. But you couldn’t walk among them for more than a few minutes on Saturday without realizing that they love their country as much as anyone ever has. They love it enough to try to save it.

I found his words startling as they exactly describe the very same realization that came to me at several points as I walked among the protesters taking pictures and saying hello. We, too, had "...gray-haired women with digital cameras and young girls with braces...guys trying to look cool in knit caps and shades and balding baby boomers trading stories about Vietnam...many ordinary families...a good-natured crowd" (Go here to view images I took of some Austin peace marchers that fit Herbert's description to a "T".)

The folks marching in Austin "love their country as much as anyone ever has," too. It's the evil monsters running it that we despise.

And the goal of the Austin protesters was no different:

The goal of the crowd was to get the attention of Congress and persuade it to move vigorously to reverse the Bush war policies. But the thought that kept returning as I watched the earnestly smiling faces, so many of them no longer young, was the way these protesters had somehow managed to keep the faith. They still believed, after all the years and all the lies, that they could make a difference. They still believed their government would listen to them and respond.

Yes, we most certainly can make a difference. The people forced the politicians and power brokers to end the war in Vietnam and the people will do it again with this latest folly, too. As Herbert wrote, "The public is way out in front of the politicians on this issue." And we all can see lots of those politicians pedaling furiously to catch up.

Thank you, Mr. Herbert, for writing such a thoughtful and articulate post for me.

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Best overall!!

For the Nashville Scene’s annual country music poll, over 80 critics from all over North America, from big-city newspapers and glossy mags, from alternative newsweeklies and self-published fanzines, voted on the best country acts and records of 2006:

BEST ALBUMS:
1. The Dixie Chicks: Taking the Long Way

BEST SINGLES:
1. The Dixie Chicks: “Not Ready To Make Nice”

BEST FEMALE VOCALISTS:
4. Natalie Maines

BEST LIVE ACTS:
2. The Dixie Chicks

BEST GROUPS AND DUOS:
1. The Dixie Chicks

BEST INSTRUMENTALISTS:
10. Emily Robison

and...

BEST OVERALL:
1. The Dixie Chicks

YEE-FUCKIN'-HAW!!

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The Great Immigration Debate...

of 1691:

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Lots'sa feet on the street...

an' can't'cha just feel the heat, George?

Below are a couple of the pixs I took at the Austin peace rally on Saturday (I've posted the remainder here):













Georgie boy, you're too ignorant and vain to recognize this, but you've never been the decider; the decider is the people. And the people are going to stop you...and Mr. "Whatever-votes-Congress-takes-on-Iraq,-it-won't-stop-us" Cheney.

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Another American for peace

In solidarity with national gatherings in major cities such as Washington, DC, New York, San Francisco and Chicago, I'm off to the Austin, TX Solidarity March for Peace. I hope to bring back a few few good pixs, which I'll post here. Today is a national day of protest against Bush's war in Iraq and I'm hopeful that folks in the street today will help in the Congressional efforts to withdraw us from that quagmire.

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14.6 million union members

According to a report issued yesterday by the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, 14.6 million wage and salary workers were union members in this country last year, down slightly from the 2005 level.

The 2006 union membership rate for private industry workers was 7.4 percent, while the rate for all government workers was 36.2 percent.

Why the great disparity between the private and public sectors unionization rate?

One good reason is that about one-third of the workers in the private sector are not entitled to union representation under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Private sector employees excluded from union representation by law include: self-employed individuals, domestic workers, farm workers, workers employed by a parent or spouse, confidential employees, supervisors, and managerial employees.

In a 2005 paper, Paula B Voos of Rutgers University described the very different situation in the public sector:

Even though public sector labor relations statutes commonly have been modeled after the NLRA in many respects, they also have major differences both from that law and from one another. When Adrienne Eaton and I reviewed these statutes in 2002, we found that eleven of them provided collective bargaining rights not only for first-level supervisors, but also for individuals at higher levels in the management hierarchy; these states were Alaska, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, and Washington. New Jersey, for instance, gives rights to employees up to the level of "managerial executive." Hence, a greater proportion of the workforce is eligible for union representation in the public sector.

If a greater proportion of a given workforce is eligible for union representation, it only stands to reason that the union membership rate is going to be higher in that workforce. Although the eligibility factor accounts for a goodly portion of the disparity between the private and public sectors unionization rates, it doesn't account for all of it.

Another significant factor for the disparity is the huge and ongoing losses of unionized manufacturing jobs in this country. Deindustrialization over the past decades has cost millions of union members their good-paying jobs. Technology can account for the loss of many of those jobs, but millions of manufacturing jobs were also exported overseas or to Mexico, a phenomena that hasn't been seen yet with federal, state or local government jobs. In 1950 about one-third of all jobs in this country were in manufacturing. By 2005, however, manufacturing represented only about 11 percent of all U.S. employment. But, considering that only about half of those manufacturing jobs are jobs typically open for union representation (the remainder are sales, design, distribution, financial planning, clerical, and human resources positions, etc.), it's not really surprising to see a report of only a 7.4 percent unionization rate in the private sector.

However, I think the biggest reason behind the disparity is corporate resistance to unionization, which is vastly more prevalent in the private sector than in the public. Many of the governmental entities that allow for some sort of labor relations activities with their public employees are officially neutral with respect to discouraging or encouraging their employees to unionize. I'm not saying that employer resistance is nonexistent in the public sector, just that it doesn't at all come close to the wretched level in the private sector. In a recent study on this issue the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago found that:

[U]nion membership in the United States is not declining because workers no longer want or need unions. Instead, falling union density is directly related to employers’ near universal and systematic use of legal and illegal tactics to stymie workers’ union organizing.

Kate Bronfenbrenner's widely referenced and highly respected September 2000 report to the U.S. Trade Deficit Review Commission found that sixty-eight percent of manufacturing employers made threats to close all or part of the plant during the organizing drive.

Not only are threats of plant closing an extremely pervasive part of employer campaigns, her report also found they are very effective: "The election win rate associated with campaigns where the employer made plant closing threats is, at 38 percent, significantly lower than the 51 percent win rate found in units where no threats occurred."

Here are a few more statistics compiled by the AFL-CIO on private-sector employer resistance to unionization:

Employers that illegally fire at least one worker for union activity during organizing campaigns: 25%
Employers that hire consultants or union-busters to help them fight union organizing drives: 75%
Employers that force employees to attend one-on-one meetings with their own supervisors against the union: 78%
Employers that force employees to attend mandatory, closed-door meetings against the union: 92%
Employers that threaten to call the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services during organizing drives that include undocumented employees: 52%
Workers in 2003 who received back pay because of illegal employer discrimination for activities legally protected under the National Labor Relations Act: 23,144
Percentage of unions newly formed by workers whose employers do not agree to a first contract within two years: 45%
____________________________
Sources: Kate Bronfenbrenner, Uneasy Terrain: The Impact of Capital Mobility on Workers, Wages and Union Organizing, Cornell University, Sept. 6, 2000; Human Rights Watch, Unfair Advantage: Workers’ Freedom of Association in the United States Under International Human Rights Standards, 2000; Membership survey for the AFL-CIO, Peter D. Hart Research Associates, 2005; National Labor Relations Board annual reports; Federal Mediation & Conciliation Service annual report, 2004.

Employer suppression of unionization and a dysfunctional labor law is so egregious in the private sector that in 2000, Human Rights Watch published a report that concluded:

"[L]egal obstacles tilt the playing field so steeply against freedom of association that the United States is in violation of international human rights standards for workers."

Clearly, the evidence is overwhelming, all of the cards in the deck are stacked against U.S. private-sector workers who dare to form or join a labor union. Research, though, shows that 59 percent of currently unorganized American workers would like to have collective bargaining agent. There can be little doubt that overt employer opposition is a major cause of this unfulfilled demand--and a major cause of the disparity between the private and public sectors unionization rate.

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Education, agitation, mobilization

The Nation has an excellent editorial in their just released February 5 issue. The following passages from it resonated particularly well with me (emphasis mine):

For the Republic

World opinion is against it. The American people are against it. The Democratic Party is against it. The Congress of the United States is against it. The Iraq Study Group is against it. The Iraqi people are against it. The Iraqi government is against it. Many Republican lawmakers are against it. The top brass are against it. But George W. Bush is going to do it: send 21,500 more troops into Iraq. Can a single man force a nation to fight a war it does not want to fight, expand a war it does not want to expand--possibly to other countries? If he can, is that nation any longer a democracy in any meaningful sense? Is its government any longer a constitutional republic? If not, how can democratic rule and the republican form of government be restored?

[A]lmost everyone declares by now that there is no military solution in Iraq, only a political one. But the hard truth is that there is probably no political solution, either. Certainly, it is beyond the power of the United States to achieve one. Only Iraqis have the capacity to solve their political problems, yet there is no sign that they are headed in this direction. On the contrary, they are sliding deeper into a sort of half-smothered, underground civil war of extraordinary brutality. The professed mission of the American troops is to stop this internal war. But how can that be done with an M-16? "Whom do you shoot at--the Sunni or the Shia?" Senator John Warner has appropriately asked. Perhaps both? In that case, which Iraqis are American troops fighting for ?

[T]he problem with American policy was never that it chose this or that bad strategy in Iraq but that it planted itself in Iraq at all. Once that was done, all strategies were bad, condemning the United States to stumble from error to error--doing more of the fighting, doing less; attacking Shiites, attacking Sunnis; helping Shiites, helping Sunnis; writing a Constitution, letting "the Iraqis" write a Constitution; disbanding the Baath Party, inviting back the Baathists; letting Kurds opt out of Iraq, dragging them into Iraq. Now, four years into the game, American policy has gone from mistaken to unintelligible--its actions not so much misguided as irrelevant to the ghastly conflict now under way.

[T]he deepest theme of the whole three-decade story, now presented in almost outlandish caricature by the President's tug of war with the nation and the world over Iraq, is the issue of power and how it shall be constituted in the United States, and the deepest question the crisis presents is whether this country will continue to be a constitutional republic or bow down to the new system of one-man rule asserted by President Bush. It's an issue that must concern every citizen, and the antiwar movement is in fact reviving it.

Should Congress...impeach President Bush while letting him fight his war? Decency and respect for human life forbid such a conclusion. What is quite permissible, however, is to recall that investigations that could lead to impeachment may, as one ingredient of Congress's activity, strengthen rather than weaken the efforts to end the war. Investigations, resolutions, legislation, not to mention citizen action, can all find their place as part of the common effort.

So, can a president be forced to not fight a war he wants to fight, to not expand a war he wants to expand--possibly to other countries?

Absolutely; as the editorial talks about, it's been done before. Despite the overall failures of main-street media to live up to their core purpose, for the past four years folks have been educating, agitating, and mobilizing other folks against Bush's war on Iraq--and all that work is now starting to pay off. We've put people into Congress who should be supportive of those investigations that could strengthen efforts to end the war. More people are talking among themselves about ending the war. More people are calling and writing their elected representatives and editors of newspapers demanding an end to the fighting. More college campuses and cities are passing anti-war resolutions. A nonbinding resolution has been introduced in the Senate saying the U.S. commitment in Iraq "can only be sustained" with popular support among the American public and in Congress. And more people are marching in the streets in protest of this unnecessary war. In two days, I'll be joining other protesters marching in the streets of Austin against the war, as will thousands of other folks in numerous cities across the country, including the January 27 March on Washington. Our goal? Show Bush that his war on Iraq is not supported by the American public.

I recommend your taking a trip over to The Nation to read the full editorial, it's well worth it. I also hope you'll join in the peace rallies this weekend. Bush's bullets and bombs can be stopped--just as quickly as a sufficient number of of us tell him so.

Education, agitation and mobilization has always produced change. And it'll do so again this time.

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Let's Work Together

I sure would have tuned into Bush's SOTU address last night had I thought I was going to hear this:


Who's singing? Why these guys are. Also, go here for a great clip of "Living the Blues - The Story of Canned Heat."

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Farmers Branch proposed ordinance

Members of Farmers Branch City Council are scheduled tonight to vote on repealing their divisive Ordinance No. 2892 and replacing it with divisive proposed Ordinance 2903.

As reported here:

David Urias, a staff attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said the proposed ordinance appears very similar to the one passed in November, which MALDEF is challenging in a federal lawsuit.

"They made slight refinements based on some of the challenges that were made to it, but overall it is still an attempt to turn apartment owners into immigration officials," Urias said. "The city would still mandate that they check persons' documents and that is going to be a big problem for our client tenants and apartment owners."

I agree.

I also maintain that putting Ordinance 2903 up for simple majority vote by the residents of Farmers Branch, which 2903 does, doesn’t confer on it any special legitimacy. I understand the value of folks being given an opportunity to express their feelings on this issue through a referendum. Doing so will give Farmers Branch residents a direct say-so in the affairs of their community, and obviously that is the preferred way to go than the sneaky behind-closed-doors shenanigans the City Council members used with Ordinance 2892.

Still, if 2903 were to pass muster with the voters (assuming a court ruling doesn’t prevent a vote on it in the first place), that doesn’t at all mean that the ordinance is legal. California Proposition 187, a 1994 ballot initiative designed to deny illegal immigrants social services, health care, and public education, passed with 58.8% of the vote. Majority support for that initiative, however, didn’t stop a court from finding it was an unconstitutional measure on the basis that federal law overrides state authority in immigration matters.

The pushers of ordinances 2892 and 2903 would undoubtedly use majority approval as legitimacy cover to continue to push this matter forward on political and legal fronts. But doing so would really only serve to prevent the City Council from executing their duties intelligently, respectfully, honestly, with respect for all cultures, religions, and races and without prejudice. Unless, of course, they don’t subscribe to that mission.

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I'm with Stupid

The only way I’d tune in to Bush’s sixth constitutionally required State of the Union address tomorrow night is with confirmation from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s office that Pelosi, who’ll be sitting directly behind Bush and to the side of Cheney, will be wearing this t-shirt:



I will not, however, pass up the Democratic response to be given by Virginia Senator Jim Webb, a former Secretary of the Navy under President Ronald Reagan and a highly decorated Vietnam War veteran whose son is stationed in Iraq. Can’t wait for that.

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Real cowboys don't eat horsemeat...

or slaughter them so someone else could eat them either:

"The lone cowboy riding his horse on a Texas trail is a cinematic icon. Not once in memory did the cowboy eat his horse."
--Judge Fortunato Benavides, 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a decision this past Friday overturning a lower court ruling invalidating a 1949 Texas law that banned horse slaughter for the purpose of selling the meat for food.

The only thing that could have made me happier about the 5th Circuit's ruling is if it had applied to all three of Texas' horse slaughter plants and not just the two that it did. As soon as I get the opportunity I'll look into why the third Texas horse slaughter plant wasn't included in this ruling.

In the meantime, The Humane Society of the United States has a very good press release on this great news.

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I was very wrong

I have deleted my "Farmers Branch Chris McGuire Right" post that I published yesterday because I had it all wrong.

In that post I stated that the Farmers Branch City Council's new proposed ordinance might be more challenging to defeat legally because it was tied into the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's regulations that require rental tenants to submit evidence of citizenship or immigration status to apartment owners and/or property managers. I stated that because I thought the tie-in with the HUD regulations was a new and clever way on the part of the FB City Council to maintain their controversial measure banning landlords from renting to unauthorized immigrants. But I was very wrong about that because their original Ordinance 2892 also contained that same tie-in with the HUD requirements. Now, I looked at Ordinance 2892 before castigating it several times here in the past and I should have recalled that it too has a clearly-stated tie-in to the HUD citizenship/eligible immigrant status requirement. But I failed big time to remember that fact when writing my post yesterday. The whole premise of my argument was, therefore, senseless. I should have done a side-by-side comparison of the old and new ordinances and then reported on the differences. I failed to do that and my failure resulted in my publishing an inaccurate and very non-credible post.

I wrote a hit-piece not fully knowing what I was talking about and I regret doing that very, very much.

In order to accumulate the wisdom enabling us to do the right thing in life, we're supposed to learn from our misjudgments and mistakes. I certainly have done so with my blunder here. Color me chagrined.

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Why EFCA?

I've written about the need for the Employee Free Choice Act (here, here, and here), but the following commentary in The American Prospect online edition by Bruce Raynor, president of UNITE HERE, provides a powerful and poignant example of everything that's been wrong for the past quarter century with the National Labor Relations Act and National Labor Relations Board:

Losing By Winning
What one NLRB case this year tells us about our broken collective bargaining laws.
By Bruce Raynor
Web Exclusive: 12.21.06


"There's no reason to subject the workers to an election."


In the past year, full-page ads taken out in The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal by the anti-union organization Center for Union Facts featured this quotation and my picture, alongside pictures of Cuban leader Fidel Castro and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. Then, the caption: "Who Said It?"

Here's the answer: I said it. And I believe it. And the National Labor Relations Board issued a decision in August that shows just how right I am.

Eight years ago our union made the mistake of putting our faith in the current NLRB election system on behalf of a group of tough, dedicated, largely immigrant warehouse workers at the Goya Foods facility in Miami, Florida, who were looking to improve their economic lot and to be treated with respect and dignity on the job. Now, in 2006, these workers have won every single legal decision brought before the NLRB, but they have not gotten good raises, a union contract, better treatment or any other improvements. If this is winning, it's hard to imagine what losing looks like.

Back in 1998, workers at Goya Foods of Florida, the largest Hispanic-owned company in the United States, voted overwhelmingly for union representation by UNITE (now UNITE HERE) by a combined vote of 83 to 31 in two separate elections. These elections vicious "vote no" campaigns by company management, which included harassing workers who supported the union, threatening workers, and holding mandatory meetings full of anti-union diatribes. In an amazing show of courage and mutual support, the Latino workers persevered and won the union election in the giant Florida warehouse of this very profitable company. The workers were looking for a solution to their problems of poor treatment, low wages, expensive health insurance, and supervisor favoritism, and hoped they had found it by electing to have union representation.

After the union was certified at Goya, the company embarked on a concerted campaign to frustrate the workers' desires. The plan was to utilize the delays and the lack of powerful remedies inherent in our country's labor laws to weaken and divide the Company's employees to the point where they would give up on forming a union.

The workers and their union representatives fought back tenaciously. We forced the company to the bargaining table and kept them there. We organized rallies, car caravans, meetings, and other public events to keep the workers' spirits up and to involve the Miami community in our struggle with a company that largely serves the Latino community. We filed scores of charges with the National Labor Relations Board, challenging the company's recalcitrant conduct in bargaining, their unilateral changes in working conditions, and their discriminatory treatment of those who dared to openly support the union.

Eventually, the NLRB's General Counsel charged Goya with at least twenty-three separate, textbook violations of U.S. labor law, including the usual threats of job loss, plant closings, interrogation, discrimination in work assignments, and the firing of at least four union supporters. Later in 1999, the Company ceased bargaining with us and -- illegally -- withdrew recognition of our union.

The union, the workers, and the General Counsel took the case to a trial under federal labor law before an Administrative Law Judge in June 2000. In February 2001, the judge ruled in favor of the union and workers on every single issue in a well written and thoughtfully reasoned decision. He ruled that the four Goya workers were fired illegally for supporting the union and recommended that the NLRB order their reinstatement and back wages (no penalties are provided by the National Labor Relations Act). He found the company guilty of threats against workers who supported the union, interrogation of union supporters, and failure to bargain in good faith as required by federal law.

Of course the Company appealed -- creating another delay of justice. But by July of 2001, the record was complete: the briefs were in, the Board had the transcripts and the exhibits, and the case was, as they say, "ripe for decision."

I don't know what the Board was doing over the next five years and two months.

(please go here for remainder of article)

In the last Congress, close to a majority of representatives in the House (216) and in the Senate (44) co-sponsored the Employee Free Choice Act. Given the political makeup of the current 110th Congress, we should see a majority in both houses signing on as co-sponsors once this most important piece of legislation for workers' rights is introduced in a couple of weeks.

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Farmers Branch brown-out ordinance--out the window?

The Farmers Branch city attorney has been directed by the members of the city council to draft a new ordinance for them to consider next Monday night, which would repeal the divisive apartment ordinance adopted in November that penalizes apartment managers who rent to unauthorized immigrants. (See other posts here labeled Farmers Branch.)

Stephanie Sandoval of The Dallas Morning News has written an excellent and detailed piece on this today:

FB considers repeal of immigration ordinance
Move would reverse decision to enforce law until May election
05:11 PM CST on Thursday, January 18, 2007

Farmers Branch officials on Monday will consider tossing out a controversial ordinance banning apartments from renting to illegal immigrants and reversing last week's decision to implement the ordinance until voters decide in May if they want to keep it.

City Council members held a special meeting Wednesday night, and directed the city attorney to draft a new ordinance for them to consider Monday night, which would repeal the apartment ordinance adopted in November and which is the subject of four lawsuits. That ordinance requires apartment management to obtain proof all tenants are U.S. citizens or in the country legally.

The ordinance the council is to consider Monday also is to include revisions to the citizenship or residency requirements in the apartment ordinance and call for that revised ordinance to be put to the voters on May 12. If approved by voters it would go into effect May 22. It was unclear whether the ordinance would specifically target illegal immigrants.

The council's directive from Wednesday night also appears to make concessions to issues raised in a lawsuit claiming the city violated state open meetings act when they adopted the ordinance in November.

The directive specifically states that the new proposed ordinance will be posted on the city's Web site no later than 6 p.m. Friday, and that the agenda for Monday’s meeting will include a public hearing before the council votes on it.

(rest of story here)

Seems to me that this is an attempt on the part of the FB city council to limit their city's mounting legal liability..and to try and save their own political asses, too, although I suspect it's now too late for that.

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Marcha Migrante II

Another march on Farmers Branch:

In addition to the major march on Farmers Branch, Texas being organized for April 1, it looks like Marcha Migrante II will also soon be coming to that city. Marcha Migrante II is a 5,000 mile journey that begins on February 2 in San Diego, California and is scheduled to arrive in Farmers Branch on February 14, Valentine's Day. Interestingly, the name Valentine comes from the Latin word valor, meaning worthy. Given Farmers Branch's recently adopted measures naming English the official language and fining some, but not all*, landlords who rent their apartments to unauthorized immigrants, I'd say they merit the Marcha Migrante II visit.

(*The rental ordinance only applies to property owners, managers and tenants of buildings that contain three or more apartments, but does not apply to property owners, managers and tenants of single-family rental homes or buildings with less than three apartment units.)

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Nasty Texas weather...

No, that's not a small people porch, that'd be to the right a bit. This is the puppy porch to the doggie door, which, thankfully, none of the five inside and one outside cats have yet learned to use. Ben, our half-lab half-corgi dog, aka, The Trickster, enjoyed breaking off the icicles and bringing them into the house to munch on--while sitting atop our new living room chair! Like me, our weenie dog, Cowboy, is way too much of a cold-weather wuss to be much interested in playing with frozen water.

As to "OK"., our outside kitty, I rigged up a little cabin for her in the back of my utility trailer under our carport. The Trailer has a camper top on it and I propped a small electric heater on the open tailgate. For comfy inside accommodations, I then threw down an old spread on top of a carpet scrap on the floor. It ain't much for looks, but it sure works. OK is a warm, dry and happy kitty despite the frightful weather:

Here's a better shot of OK:

He's a beautiful brute, no? We're happy he's adopted us.

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Farmers Branch April 1 Rally

According to a report in yesterday's edition of Al Día , a Dallas, Texas Spanish language newspaper, organizers are planning an April 1 "Mega March" on Farmers Branch, Texas in protest of that town's ordinance penalizing apartment owners who rent to undocumented migrants.

In the Al Día report, Domingo García, an attorney and civic leader, said that Congress will be discussing immigration reform around April or May and that the march would help emphasize to Congress that reform is needed. Elizabeth Villafranca, president of the Farmers Branch chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens said that they wanted the Latino community of Farmers Branch to feel supported.

Planning of the march has barely begun, but according to the newspaper report, the planners are looking to turn out 100,000 marchers. I don't know if that's a misprint on the papers part, and I gotta wonder how realistic that goal is, but I'd sure like to see those many folks marching in Farmers Branch--especially down the street where divisive Ordinance No. 2892 pusher Tim O'Hare lives.

Meanwhile, I wonder what Gary Greer, the incoming city manager for Farmers Branch, thinks about the terrible mess O'Hare and his cohorts on the city council got the city in? Guess we'll have to stay tuned for that.

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Another Republican's call to get outta there!

In yet another call for Bush to withdraw our forces from Iraq, Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to President Reagan and a treasury official during the administration of Bush The Elder, had this to say in his New York Times column today:

I think Bush should have the courage to do what Ronald Reagan did in Lebanon. Reagan sent American troops into that country as part of a multinational peacekeeping force in 1982. But after the situation continued to deteriorate and, in October of 1983, 241 Marines were killed when a truck loaded with explosives blew up outside their barracks, Reagan pulled out.

At the peak of the Cold War, this was a very hard thing for Reagan to do. He knew it would show weakness and undermine his position in dealing with the Soviet Union. But he realized, as Bush does not, that you cannot undo a mistake by continuing to make it. All you can do is stop making the mistake, cut your losses and move on.

That'd be terrific, Bruce, but the problem is, Bush, unlike the man I wrote about earlier today, isn't a stand-up guy. He doesn't have any courage; he's a spineless delusional deceiver and he's not going to withdraw from Iraq--unless enough of us raise enough hell to force him to.

Please call your congressional representatives and urge them to stop the escalation. (Go to Project Vote Smart's homepage and enter your 9-digit zip code to find contact information on all of your federal and state representatives. Don't know your 9-digit zip? Go here and the U.S. Postal Service will quickly serve it up to you.)

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Happy Birthday Champ!

Dave Anderson has penned a nice Happy Birthday piece in the NYT today about one of my heroes:



Muhammad Ali is 65 years young today and despite Parkinson's disease invading his body, don'tcha know he still has that twinkle of mischief in his heart if not his eyes.

"I am the onliest of boxing's poet laureates," he said. And he was that:

You think the world was shocked when Nixon resigned?
Wait till I whup George Foreman’s behind.

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee
His hands can’t hit what his eyes can’t see
Now you see me, now you don’t
George thinks he will, but I know he won’t.

I done wrassled with an alligator
I done tussled with a whale
Only last week I murdered a rock
Injured a stone, hospitalized a brick
I’m so mean I make medicine sick.

- Before the "Rumble in the Jungle" 1974

He is also a stand-up guy. During the height of Ali's boxing career he refused on conscientious objector grounds to be inducted into the Army during our war on the North Vietnamese people:

No, I am not going 10,000 miles to help murder kill and burn other people to simply help continue the domination of white slavemasters over dark people the world over. This is the day and age when such evil injustice must come to an end. (Source: Voices of A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove eds.)

Ali was convicted for his refusal, but the U.S. Supreme Court, in an 8-0 opinion overturned that conviction:

Petitioner appealed his local draft board's rejection of his application for conscientious objector classification. The Justice Department, in response to the State Appeal Board's referral for an advisory recommendation, concluded, contrary to a hearing officer's recommendation, that petitioner's claim should be denied, and wrote that board that petitioner did not meet any of the three basic tests for conscientious objector status. The Appeal Board then denied petitioner's claim, but without stating its reasons. Petitioner refused to report for induction, for which he was thereafter tried and convicted. The Court of Appeals affirmed. In this Court the Government has rightly conceded the invalidity of two of the grounds for denial of petitioner's claim given in its letter to the Appeal Board, but argues that there was factual support for the third ground. Held: Since the Appeal Board gave no reason for the denial of a conscientious objector exemption to petitioner, and it is impossible to determine on which of the three grounds offered in the Justice Department's letter that board relied, petitioner's conviction must be reversed.

--CLAY, aka ALI v. UNITED STATES, 403 U.S. 698

Colin Powell said of Ali, ''I wouldn't call him a draft dodger. . . . He stood up and said this is something I cannot do and I will take whatever consequences come from that decision. I admire that in a man.'' (Source: The Prettiest of Them All, Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, December 19, 2001.)

As I said, Ali is a stand up guy; that's one of the reasons I consider him a hero.

If you'd like to send Ali a birthday wish, just surf on over to the Muhammad Ali Center where they have set up a page where you can do just that.

Peace to you and all the best, Champ!

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Homo stupid

I like this comment by Chris to Latina Lista's post, The Point of No Return for Immigration Reform: The Proof is in the Pizza

Chris said…

"How far back do we go to figure out who was here first."

Sioux? Cherokee?

To be honest, large tracts of the Southwest were simply taken from Mexico by American business interests.

I'm not really clear on why you continually say that others here "don't care" about illegal immigration. It may simply be the fact that the vast majority of the reality based community don't see it as the biggest (not even close) problem facing our problem today? Aren't fine young Americans coming home in body bags on a daily basis? Is this nation running a $9 TRILLION deficit? Is our Constitution, and thus very way of life, under siege from an administration out of control? Is our country not chock full of facilities that have both "special" nuclear materials (HEU, and plutonium primarily), and completely inadequate security?

Now tell me again why I should care more because someone comes from a neighboring country and takes a job in my community, than someone coming from a neighboring town or state.

Quite frankly, I am FAR more concerned that the financial mismanagement in Washington will within my lifetime result in an America that people won't want to come to anymore. To my mind, that is a far worse problem than an America that everyone wants to come to.

This garbage has been going on for years:

"They're coming to take you jobs!"
"Who?"
"The Italians!"
"Really?"
"Yes!"

"They're coming to take your jobs!"
"Who?"
"The Irish!"
"Really?"
"Yes!"

"They're coming to take your jobs!"
"Who?"
"The blacks!"
"Really?"
"Yes!"

"Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion."
Benjamin Franklin- 1751

I hadn't seen that Ben Franklin quote before, but it is disheartening to think that two and one-half centuries later we have so many folks in this country still spewing this same nonsense. Are we supposedly Homo sapiens ever going to get over racism and our hatred of strangers, or are we doomed to remain Homo stupid forever?

Anyway, very nice writing, Chris, thank you.

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Bush isn't the decider, we are

From Molly...

WE simply cannot let it continue...

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we’re for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush’s proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, “Stop it, now!”

United for Peace and Justice is organizing the January 27 March on Washington that Molly references, and wouldn't it be something to have as many folks turn out for it as did for the 1963 March on Washington where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his I Have A Dream speech?

The people always are the deciders, of course, but getting enough of us into the streets demanding change is the tricky thing to do. President Bush, though, is making that task less difficult with each passing day.

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Keep Bush I say

New York Times Op-Ed columnist Frank Rich has a good column in that paper today that challenges Senators McCain or Warner to dump President Bush for the good of the country:

The question now is how to minimize the damage before countless more Americans and Iraqis are slaughtered to serve the president’s endgame of passing his defeat on to the next president. The Democrats can have all the hearings they want, but they are unlikely to take draconian action (cutting off funding) that would make them, rather than Mr. Bush, politically vulnerable to blame for losing Iraq.

I have long felt that it will be up to Mr. Bush’s own party to ring down the curtain on his failed policy, and after the 2006 midterms, that is more true than ever. The lame-duck president, having lost both houses of Congress and at least one war (Afghanistan awaits), has nothing left to lose. That is far from true of his party.

Even conservatives like Sam Brownback of Kansas and Norm Coleman of Minnesota started backing away from Iraq last week. Mr. Brownback is running for president in 2008, and Mr. Coleman faces a tough re-election fight. But Republicans not in direct electoral jeopardy (George Voinovich of Ohio, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska) are also starting to waver. It’s another Vietnam-Watergate era flashback. It wasn’t Democrats or the press that forced Richard Nixon’s abdication in 1974; it was dwindling Republican support. Though he had vowed to fight his way through a Senate trial, Nixon folded once he lost the patriarchal leader of his party’s right wing.

That leader was Barry Goldwater , who had been one of Nixon’s most loyal and aggressive defenders until he finally realized he’d been lied to once too often. If John McCain won’t play the role his Arizona predecessor once did, we must hope that John Warner or some patriot like him will, for the good of the country, answer the call of conscience. A dangerous president must be saved from himself, so that the American kids he’s about to hurl into the hell of Baghdad can be saved along with him.

Given my current liberal political persuasions (two points to right of Ted Kennedy, three points to left of Hillary Clinton), it's amazing to me that I once supported Goldwater, but I did. And the reason I did was because I felt that unlike almost all politicians, Goldwater was a direct talker, that is, he didn't camouflage his feelings about his beliefs, political or otherwise. (Coupla' examples: ''I believe Reagan did know of the diversion of Iranian funds to the Contras. He had to know. The White House explanation makes him out to be either a liar or incompetent.'' And, “I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.”)

I still detest politicians who speak politician talk, but to get back on point for this post, I don't think there's a snowball's chance in hell that Senator John McCain will play the role Frank Rich attributes to Goldwater. McCain has become far too much of a double-talking political whore for that. As to Senator John Warner, I like his position on gun control (he supports it), abortion (he's pro-choice), embryonic stem cell (he supports it) and global warming (in 2005 he signed onto a Sense of the Senate resolution declaring that "global warming is happening, it is caused by human activity, and needs immediate attention"), but while he may be one of the Republican Party's "patriarchal" leaders in the senate today, I don't think he has anywhere near the standing to lead his party's back turning on Bush.

Despite the fact that I'd like nothing more than to see Republican support for Bush dwindle to the point of forcing him from office (for the same reason articulated by Frank Rich), I just don't see that even coming close to happening. Also, if Bush goes, Cheney steps up. And if that happened we can for sure forget about minimizing the damage before countless more Americans and Iraqis are slaughtered. Better to work on controlling Bush in his weakened state than turning things over (officially) to Cheney. Besides, the person who can--and will--continue to damage the Republican Party the most is Bush. And for that reason, too, Bush should stay.

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